It is generally accepted that the major part of the cost involved in the production of large-size commercial evaporative coolers is the assembly cost and the cost of the parts and sub-assemblies which make up the assembly from its component parts, e.g. the support frames for the motor pump and blower assembly. In one known cooler construction, use is made of a bulky "A" frame to support the fan casing (scroll) with respect to the cooler body with both the "A" frame and scroll being of metal construction. Such an arrangement is undesirable in that it is labour intensive and makes use of fasteners such as rivets and screws.
This invention is specifically directed to improvements in an evaporative cooler of the type wherein a cabinet is provided with a top panel, a bottom panel, four side panels, at least some of said panels being pervious, one of said panels being a discharge panel having surfaces defining an exhaust opening therein, a blower comprising an impeller and a volute housing within the cabinet, means for discharging water over the pervious panels, and a motor coupled for drive to the impeller.
In evaporative coolers of the above-defined type, usually it is required that the discharge panel should be directed downwardly so that air passes from an external source above the roof of a building, downwardly through an upwardly directed duct. However there are many instances wherein it is desired to discharge the air horizontally and there are still further instances sometimes encountered wherein it is desired to discharge the air upwardly from the cooler.
If a cooler is formed from metal it can be made rigid but satisfactory corrosion inhibition has been very difficult to achieve without using expensive metals such as marine grade aluminium. Consequently many coolers utilise polymeric panels but a difficulty is then introduced in that the panels are not usually structurally strong unless excessive amounts of polymeric material are used. In normal installations the bottom panel is supported on a substantial substrate, and in order to provide mechanical strength to the cooler it is necessary for any load applied to the cooler to be transmitted downwardly to the bottom panel. While this can be achieved solely by corner posts, this is in itself not always sufficient and one object of this invention is to provide improvements in the construction of a cooler so arranged that the cooler has further compression means capable of transmitting load from the top to the bottom panel. Clearly this is very simply arranged if the elements of the cooler are always in the same configuration (for example a downwardly facing discharge panel). However it is not always simple to achieve this if it is required that the configuration might vary with a minor change only of the elements of the cooler.
The main object of this invention therefore is to provide improvements whereby the blower oriented to discharge downwardly, outwardly through a side panel or upwardly through the upper panel.